Note: "The Christmas Song" © Mel Torme and R.Wells
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The dull-eyed Marine who had had the misfortune to draw Christmas duty waved Al past the gates without even a second glance. The Lieutenant Commander smirked. His vehicle was distinctive, all right. That's how he liked to play it: unique and flashy. Besides, girls were always all over a guy with a hot car.
There wouldn't be any girls today, he reflected grimly. If he survived what he was putting himself through he would have to settle for little rewards instead of big ones. A cigar and more of that twelve-year-old Scotch. Hard to find girls on Christmas Day.
He parked exactly where he wasn't supposed to, reasoning that nobody would come around checking the administration staff's spots this of all mornings and well aware that if he needed to make a quick escape he would want the car close.
The main door to the hangar was locked, but that wasn't going to stop him. Al the Pick had come prepared. He went around to the back, where there was a smaller door next to the overheads. From his pocket he took a pharmacy vial that had once held Percodan provided for one of his post-operative "independent living" experiences in San Diego, an industrial-weight paper clip, and a small piece of copper wire harvested from behind a wall outlet in the apartment and flattened with the meat tenderiser. The vial held a little puddle of olive oil, with which he greased the wire, bending the tip into a little triangle. Then he opened the paper clip and slipped it into the lock. He stroked the pins lightly with the copper pick, keeping a good steady pressure with the paper clip. You had to be gentle, petting the lock the way you would pet a woman's hair. Then one stabbing thrust with the copper wire at the right moment, followed by an energetic twist of the wrist gripping the paper clip, and the deadbolt sprung. Grinning to himself, Al slipped into the hangar, taking care to bolt the door again behind him.
He groped around for the light switch, his eyes slow to accustom themselves to the gloom. He didn't want to turn on many lights—just enough so that he could find his way out if he needed to.
He told himself that this was stupid. There was no reason for him to be sneaking around like this. All he would have had to do was ask Yardley for permission… but Yardley probably would have insisted on having a tech on duty, and someone to run the simulator, or at least a Marine to stand around and see that the crazed war veteran didn't wreck anything.
All right, that wasn't fair. Yardley was a decent human being, and it wasn't right to pretend he wasn't. If he found out, though, that Al had been poking around in restricted areas unsupervised—and forcing locks—there would be consequences, and they weren't likely to be pretty.
Al didn't care. He had always had a reckless spirit, but there was more to this than that. He had learned, the hard way, the exact value of each action—precisely how much torture, anguish and wretchedness each gesture of defiance was worth. This one, a whole day in the simulator to grapple with his terror, was worth a lot more than a reprimand, which was what he would probably get if they caught him. Absolute worst-case scenario, they'd discharge him from NASA and he'd get shunted back into Naval service, which was where he was going to end up anyway if he couldn't get past this irrational fear of confined spaces.
He found an itinerary in one of the wall lockers. Not bothering to put on a flight suit, he took off his shoes and his tie, and climbed into the simulator as he was, in bright polyester civvies and stocking feet. It occurred to him abruptly that he couldn't close the hatch from the inside. On the other hand, though, he couldn't open it from the inside either, so that was probably just as well. He glanced quickly around the hangar before sliding down into the middle seat.
With no Cap Com, no light cues, and no co-pilots, he couldn't have any really accurate sense of space flight, but that didn't matter. What mattered was separating this capsule from the memories of other tiny spaces. If he could do it with this one, he would try the LEMS next—which somehow seemed a thousand times more difficult. Al strapped himself in and began to work through the launch itinerary, talking out everyone's part as best he could.
To his amazement, he reached the end of the booklet before he realized that his chest was aching and he was sweating profusely. With effort, he hauled himself out of the simulator and sank to the floor, chafing his hands against his face. He had done it. A whole ninety-minute session in the capsule without breaking down into panic.
A mean voice in the back of his head told him that he had done it before, too. It then proceeded to remind him that there had been no extra bodies generating heat, and the hatch had been open and the capsule not pressurized. There had been no jolts, no lights, no sensory distractions, no stress. He didn't stand a chance in an actual simulation.
Al ordered the voice to be quiet. When it wouldn't obey, he tried to overpower it with recitation of facts. He had gone through the motions of a whole launch. He had stayed calm and focused on the task at hand. What's more, he was going to do it again!
He swapped the itinerary for a more complicated one and padded back to the simulator, his unshod feet silent on the concrete. It was harder to climb into the capsule this time: his throat closed and his heart hammered. He did it, though, sitting down and closing his eyes against the apparition of the walls pressing in around him. He took slow, deliberate breaths. I told you so, the little voice mocked. You can't do it.
"The hell I can't," he growled, his voice reverberating in the capsule. The echo comforted him. Small spaces didn't echo. He opened his eyes and started to talk through the procedure. Soon, though, shivers were coursing through his body, and his breath was coming shallow and fast. There was the familiar pressure on the back of his neck. Defiant, unwilling to surrender so easily, he began to talk louder.
Suddenly there was a voice shouting from outside the simulator.
"Who's there? Come out slowly! I have a gun!"
Al froze, not sure that he had heard correctly. Then the familiar, accented female voice repeated its demand.
"Come out! I have a gun!"
Elsa Orsós. Al got to his feet and moved to the hatch. He raised his hands out of the opening, palms open.
"I'm coming out!" he called. He had heard enough half-joking stories about crossing feminists to be wary of taking his chances, especially with this one. "Ready? Here I come."
He climbed out slowly, lowering himself onto the metal steps. Sure enough, there she stood next to her customary console, pointing something black and metal at him.
"You!" she exclaimed.
"Yeah, me. Surprise." Al smirked. "That's not a gun, that's a deep-socket ratchet."
She looked at the object she was holding with some discomfiture. "You frightened me," she said. "I thought that someone had broken into the simulator."
"Someone did," Al said, dispensing with the stairs and swinging himself to the ground in an attempt to look confident. It backfired as his fear-weakened knees trembled and almost buckled. He straightened and tried a roguish grin. "Me."
"I'm calling the guards." She turned towards the telephone affixed to a nearby pillar. Then she stopped and frowned. "How did you get in here?" she demanded.
Al shrugged. "Back door," he said simply.
"I came in the back door, too," Elsa said. "It was locked."
"I'm a man of many talents," Al told her.
Her expression of uneasiness deepened. "What are you doing in here?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
"I have a key," she said. "I come and go when I want."
"I don't have a key," Al rejoined. "Apparently I can still come and go when I want."
"It's Christmas. Why are you in the simulator on Christmas?" Elsa asked.
"I'd feel obliged to answer that," Al said; "if I thought that I was the only one defying convention here."
"I have work to do. It's quiet today. At least," she amended, shooting him a dirty look; "I thought it was going to be quiet."
Al shrugged. "You could always call the guards and have me hauled out of here," he said. "Although I'd appreciate it if I could put my shoes on first."
"I'm not calling anybody until you say what you were doing in here," Elsa said firmly.
"Practicing."
"Some practice!" she scoffed. "No lights, no partners!"
"Yeah, well, those of us in disgrace don't have that kind of luxury," Al grumbled, casting his eyes around aimlessly.
There was a silence.
"I could run the simulator for you," Elsa offered abruptly. Al looked up in surprise.
"What?"
"Run. The. Simulator. It's what I do, you know."
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why would you want to do that?"
Elsa shrugged. "Why would a man who is afraid of small spaces want to go into space?"
"All right," Al said. "Fine. I'd appreciate it. I've got flight book 32-D in there."
Elsa shook her head. "Not that one," she said. "One person can't run that one. You'd burn up in thirty seconds.
"The LEMS?" Al asked, his throat drying out.
"Unless you have an invisible playmate who can push buttons for you?"
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMAl took one last deep breath as he helped Elsa haul the hatch of the LEMS into place. He flexed his fingers anxiously, and sat down, strapping himself in and switching on his radio.
"Airlock sealed," Elsa's voice said in his ear. "Prepare for separation, LEMS."
"Uh… acknowledge Apollo," Al said. It was weird to hear a woman's voice on the other end of that thing. Just weird. "Preparing for separation."
He stretched to flip a switch that the other person should have been handling. "Disengage clamps, Apollo."
"Disengaging."
The module shook. Al coughed a little and forced himself to focus on the task at hand. He closed his fingers around the joystick and began to maneuver the LEMS free of the capsule. At least, if he hadn't been in a simulator, that would have been what was happening.
Ten minutes passed, as his collar grew damper and his head lighter. His shoulders were starting to ache, but whether it was the tension or the sense of pressure he wasn't sure. Finally, inevitably, he started to panic.
"I've got to get out of here," he muttered into the microphone. "Abort the mission."
"That is a negative, LEMS," Elsa said levelly. "You are midway through your descent. Engage reverse thrusters."
"Are you hearing me?" Al gasped. "I have to get out! I can't breathe!"
"Confirming. Oxygen levels normal. Engage reverse thrusters on my mark, LEMS. Five, four—"
"I can't breathe!" Al protested. "Abort!"
"—three," Elsa continued. "Two. One. Engage."
"Engaging." The word was out and the thrusters firing before Al realized he had done it.
"Cap Com reading steady descent, LEMS," Elsa intoned. "Three degrees port."
Perspiration was trailing into Al's eyes. The walls were closing in on him. He couldn't breathe!
"Abort!" he said. "Abort!"
"LEMS, do you read me? Bank three degrees to port."
The joystick moved under his hands. He was shaking. The front of his shirt was drenched with sweat. He struggled not to remember… not to remember anything. Just calm down, Calavicci. Dammit, calm down. Not again.
NOT AGAIN! his mind wailed. They were doing it again! Didn't they have any mercy? Couldn't they let him heal a little before they bound him up? There was pressure on his jugular. His arms were compressed against his back. He couldn't move.
"You look good, LEMS." Elsa's voice was coming out of a fog bank. Al couldn't bring the console in front of him into focus. "Altitude 1200 feet and falling. Engage secondary reverse thrusters on my mark. In five, four, three, two. One. Engage."
"No!" Al moaned, his voice rasping on itself. "No! Let me out! I can't breathe!"
"Engage secondary thrusters!" Elsa ordered sharply.
The panic had control of him now. She wasn't going to let him out! He was trapped! He was going to die in here! He would die in here, suffocated and crushed, and no one would ever know! Oh, God, and he couldn't breathe!
"Let me out!" he cried, fighting his harness, fumbling fruitlessly with the buckle mechanism. He had to get free. Any second the pressure that was collapsing his lungs would force his hands into paralysis. Any second now it would be too late! "Let me out!"
"Engage thrusters!" Elsa barked.
"I can't! Let me out! Let me out!" he hollered frantically. "I can't breathe!" His next shallow inhalation was an agonized wheeze that seemed to tear open his bronchi. "I can't breathe! Let me out of here!"
"Engage thrusters!" she repeated, forceful and demanding.
"NO!" he wailed. He no longer had control over his mind, or his body, or his voice. They had won again. He had broken again. Shame and despair could not silence the terror that made him cry out, that made him beg for deliverance. "No, God, please, let me out! Have mercy! Have mercy, let me out! I can't breathe! I can't! God, please! Please, no more! No more! Stop! Please, stop! Please! Please!"
"Engage thrusters!" Elsa roared.
Al couldn't see anything. His vision was obliterated by black spots. His temples pounded. The frantic hammering of his heart against his spasming ribs was all that he could hear. But then, suddenly, the hateful voice of the heartless bitch in his ear was telling him to activate the stabilizers and prepare for EVA. The next thing he knew there was a hiss of air and someone was fumbling with his restraints. He thrashed and fought, desperate to put up one last good fight before the darkness claimed him.
"Calvichy," Elsa's voice was saying. "Calvichy, I'm not Taggert and I can't drag you out of here myself. You have to get up. Come on, get up and we'll get you out."
"Out?" Al moaned, gasping frantically for air.
"Out!" she said, hauling on his arms and forcing him out of the seat.
He was shaking violently, and he fell as she forced him through the hatch. Tumbling painfully down the steps he landed on the concrete, his body quivering with deep tremors of terror. His hands clutched frantically at the floor. His lungs slowly took control of themselves again.
A firm hand with long, sharp nails settled onto his perspiration-soaked shirt. Al crept up onto his elbows, his chest heaving as his body tried to compensate for the oxygen deprivation. The panic was fading, to be replaced by a deep sense of degradation.
"Here," Elsa said, holding a paper cup to his lips. "Drink. Calm down."
Al tried to take the cup, but he couldn't. Making his shivering fingers obey him was some kind of an abstract theory that couldn't be applied in the real world. Instead he meekly opened his mouth and let her tip the cool fluid down his parched throat. He gasped shallowly and tried to sit up. Elsa helped him, pushing back sweat-saturated curls.
"Is better?" she asked.
Al didn't answer. He shrank away from her, drawing his knees up to his chest and hiding his face in his folded arms. The shame of the situation was overwhelming. Damn it, he would have been better off with a shrink.
"You did it," Elsa said quietly.
Al looked up in astonishment. "I what?"
"You did it," she repeated. "You landed the module safely. You hit those thrusters after I shouted."
"I… don't remember that…" Al mumbled, shaking his head. He had been fighting with the tether… but his hands had left it for a second, hadn't they? Had they?
"But you did it," she said. "You see? You just needed to be forced to. You can do it. Next time will be easier."
"The heck you say," Al muttered, using her own phrase against her.
"We'll see. You take ten minutes while I reset the simulator and we'll try it again."
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMAl hated to admit it, but she was right. The firm, insistent voice in his ear that wouldn't capitulate as soon as his heart rate started to skyrocket kept him on task even when the panic was rising in his throat and all that his mind could manage was the repetitive, desperate thought that he had to get out. Elsa ordered him fiercely through two more descents and three dockings, and each time the panic grew less. She only had to forcibly haul him out once more. After that he managed to get through the hatch on his own.
When he climbed out for the last time, exhausted and numb, and realized that he had almost avoided any disgraceful exclamations altogether, he had to fight tears of gratitude.
Elsa got languidly up from her seat and crossed the room. "You see?" she said. "And you only crashed it twice."
Al laughed a little, mopping his forehead with the towel she handed him. "You're a merciless hag," he said.
"And you are an arrogant, insulting monster," she rejoined. "I think that's enough for today. I have to go, or I am going to be late."
"Christmas dinner with your family?" Al asked. He hated himself for it, but he felt a tiny pang of envy.
"My family lives in Budapest," Elsa said. "But Christmas dinner, yes. Asszony Badea cooks it for the people in her building who don't have families here. We have to be each other's family."
"Ah," Al said flatly, moving to retrieve his shoes from the corner. "Well, have a nice time. Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas," she said. "You did well."
"Hah. Sure I did." He turned and unbolted the door, one hand massaging the back of his aching neck. The slick layer of sweat coating his body was making him feel absolutely wretched. He buried the recollections of his panicked screams, trying to shake off the profound mortification that was overtaking him now at the memory.
"Calvichy!"
He halted and closed his eyes as Elsa's voice followed him out into the indifferently lit outdoors.
"Where are you going?"
"Home," he said flatly. Such as it was. "I'm not getting back into that thing, not today. I can't."
"Well…" She came forward and pressed something into his hand. "If you decide you want to come, you're welcome."
She went back inside. Al looked down at the paper she had given him. An address. He laughed hollowly. Did she seriously think he wanted to drop in on her landlady's Christmas meal? After today, he wasn't sure he even wanted to see Elsa again. Even though she was beautiful.
He got into his car, rolling down the windows and resting his sore head on the steering wheel. God, he needed to shower. He was filthy.
MWMWMMWMWMWMWMWMElsa stared out of her landlady's window at the dark streeet. Christmas lights bedecked balconies and the trees on the boulevard. Behind her, her neighbours were chattering happily in a variety of languages. She lived in a building full of foreign-born professionals, most of them unattached and all of them lonely.
She didn't know why she had invited Calavicci to join this assembly of misfits, except that she had had her share of solitary holidays, and didn't want to wish that on anyone. More confusing still was her disappointment that he hadn't come. She hadn't really expected him to, and yet here she was, at nine o'clock at night, watching the road and hoping that maybe, just maybe, he would come around the corner in his vulgar green sports car. It made no sense.
No part of her feelings about Calavicci made sense. She hated him: his lecherous eyes, his suggestive words and his childish insults. Yet she respected him as a true survivor, and as the owner of a tongue almost as quick as her own. She had the feeling, too, that he had no one to fight for him, which was probably why he was so easily angered when he was cornered. Just the sound of his voice sent her into battle mode… and he was one of the most astonishingly handsome men she had ever met.
The angry words that had cut through her heart two days ago rang through her head now. Nobody's ever been stupid enough to get near you. There was twofold hurt in Calavicci's thoughtless exclamation. First, Elsa had never found it easy to maintain a relationship. Now and then in college and at Caltech, and even once or twice since moving out here, she had tried to court—to date, the Americans called it. She had even slept with men, though her mother would have been horrified to learn that. The relationships had never lasted.
And second, there had been a boy once… it seemed like such a long time ago, though it wasn't really. Eight short years. Elsa sighed. Her heart was in a box in her side-table drawer.
That thought told her that she had had too much spiced wine. Well, a little more wasn't going to hurt, was it? It would help her forget about Calavicci and everything else. Or help her remember.
She walked unsteadily towards the crowd of holiday revelers, people who were friends and yet still strangers.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMAl knotted the belt of his bathrobe. His skin felt tender and smooth after the long, hot soak and the vigorous scrubbing. He ran his fingers through his hair, ruffling the curls so that they stood on end. He didn't care how he looked tonight. Nobody was going to see him.
The trouble was that he wanted to be happy. He wanted so badly to be happy, now that things were all right again, now that he was healthy and whole and safe again, but his mind didn't want to let him. His mind wanted to relive the terrors of the camps, to experience the torture again, to convince him he would fail at whatever he tried, and to remind him, over and over again, that Beth was gone forever. His mind didn't want this world. It wanted another lifetime, a lost lifetime.
Could a man really live four different lives? That was how it felt. The shabbily-dressed, curly-haired little urchin who had been the terror of the good Sisters of St. Anne's orphanage bore no resemblance to the brash young pilot whose life had revolved around death-defying flights and passionate nights that had been rendered suddenly monogamous by a pair of beautiful gray eyes. Neither of those people were anything like the smart-mouthed but spiritless wretch who had cast his face towards the heavens in the desperate hope of easing his torturous thirst with a little rainwater, and lived from beating to beating with grim and intractable determination. Then there was the disillusioned stranger living in an apartment with less character than some federal penitentiaries.
Al had promised himself that he would never turn into this. He had vowed that he wasn't going to let his experiences in Vietnam turn him into some kind of bitter, sadistic monster like the ones who had torn him to pieces time and again and robbed him of every last shred of dignity. How had this happened? How had carefree, fun-loving Bingo turned into the kind of old man who said horrible, unforgivably hurtful things to beautiful women and second-guessed his every action? The kind of old man who couldn't even fly a plane because he'd panic in the cockpit. This wasn't how it was supposed to be.
Oh, yeah? How was it supposed to be, then?
"Not like this," Al whispered, unwittingly protesting aloud. He should have come home to find Beth waiting. She should have been there to kiss him the way he had dreamed during those bitter, empty jungle nights that she would. She should have been there to stroke his bruised face and caress his battered body and show him that he was still worthy of love…
The trouble was that he wasn't worthy of love. He never had been and he never would be. He had deserved to lose Beth, after the way he'd never been there for her, the way he'd put duty first, the way he'd left on that second tour. He'd deserved to have Lisa die on him, after dragging her name through the mud just to save his worthless neck. He'd deserved to lose Trudy: he hadn't even cared enough about her to keep her out of the institution. Pop had died because God didn't bother to listen to the prayers of worthless, lying, foul-minded little troublemakers. He probably had even deserved to have his mother leave, even though he couldn't imagine what a six-year-old could have done to earn such cruel punishment or why poor, sweet little Trudy had had to suffer too.
Angry at the self-pitying thoughts, Al poured himself another Scotch. He knocked it back in two quick gulps. He'd forgotten how good liquor could taste. He'd forgotten a lot of things, but not enough. Not enough.
He was starting to feel tipsy from the alcohol. It felt wonderful. He laughed and poured himself another. He realized that he had never got drunk all by himself before, within the confines of his own quarters, with no Chip to egg him on.
Chip would never egg him on again.
He sighed. So he was alone. So what? He had to get over it. It was, after all, all his own fault. He'd lost or alienated everyone he had ever cared about. Even tonight, if he wanted, he could go and find company at Elsa Orsós' party, but instead he chose to be alone.
He was free to choose. He was free! The thought struck suddenly and cheered him more than he had thought anything could. Smiling now, warmed by the whiskey and purified by his weariness, he went through to the living room. He took a cigar from the box on the end table, and settled on the sofa, switching on the radio as he went. He lit up and filled his mouth with the aromatic fumes. He closed his eyes, listening to the music floating over the airwaves, out there in a world where people could come and go as they pleased, eat what they wanted, sleep when they wished, say whatever the hell they felt like without fear of torture. He was safe, he was free, and no one was ever going to harm him again. It was Christmas, and he was free, and nothing else really mattered.
"And so I'm offering this simple phrase," Nat King Cole crooned in his ear; "to kids from one to ninety-two. Although it's been said many times, many ways, Merry Christmas to yo-oo-ou..."